


Next to Die

by Footloose



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Horror, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, M/M, Urban Legends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-30
Updated: 2016-10-30
Packaged: 2018-08-28 01:04:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8424586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Footloose/pseuds/Footloose
Summary: The graduation celebration at the Pendragon family cottage in the backcountry was supposed to be a decadent weekend of sex, drugs, and alcohol, letting off steam in one last blow before the summer ended and they had to head back to adulthood and the rest of their lives.
But then everyone started to die.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Hallowe'en!

The video surveillance in the interrogation room was grainy, grey, and pixelated. 

Arthur Pendragon, twenty-one years old, recent pre-law graduate from a prestigious top-tier university, sat at the metal table in the center, his chin cradled in the palm of his hand in a slouched pose that spoke of boredom, exhaustion, and possible guilt.

Merlin's magic tingled under the surface of his skin and he twitched reflexively. The security monitor flickered, buzzed with static, and rolled vertically with broken live feed before stabilizing. Like nearly all the equipment of Ealdor's sheriff department, the surveillance system was old, rudimentary at best, and prone to failure. If anyone happened by the bank of security monitors while Merlin was questioning the prisoner during a critical juncture, well, no one would be too concerned about glitchy video.

"You headin' in to talk to him?" Lance asked, moving to block Merlin in the security cubicle.

"You shouldn't be here," Merlin said, forcing his magic to ebb away before he turned around to look at Lance. Lance was harried, red-eyed, and wore an expression full of vengeance and reckoning, so it wasn't too hard to figure out what was on Lance's mind. "Actually, let me rephrase. You _can't_ be here."

Lance stared past him at the video screen, a muscle clenching and unclenching in his jaw in the same rhythm as his fists. "He's --"

"Innocent until proven guilty," Merlin said reasonably, waving his empty coffee cup in the air. "The evidence --"

"It's bullshit," Lance snapped. He trembled with rage and barely restrained violence, turning wide eyes to Merlin. "You know it's bullshit. This kid -- this fucking spoilt brat -- he did it, he killed them, he killed Elyan, he killed them all, and you know it!"

"I know no such thing," Merlin said, putting the cup down. He braced his feet and left his arms loose at his side. Lance was acting out his grief and it was going to boil over into something he'd regret, later. Merlin would rather that Lance lost it with him rather than with another member of the department's staff. Lance was a good guy; he didn't deserve a suspension for not being stupid enough to stay the fuck home and work out his anger in some other way.

"You believe him?" Lance asked, his voice bordering on incredulous and hysterical. A quick glance around confirmed that no one was close enough to notice the tense conversation, and Merlin let Lance rage on a little longer. "He's blaming it on an _urban legend_. On fucking Golden Eyes! If he's trying to set himself up for getting off on an insanity plea, I'm going to… I'm going to --"

"Don't finish that sentence," Merlin said mildly. He put just enough warning in his tone that Lance clamped his mouth shut and had the good sense to look somewhat contrite. 

"I should… I need to --"

"You don't need to do anything that might cost us the case," Merlin said. 

Lance deflated, and Merlin relaxed enough to cross his arms over his chest. He knew it had the effect of making him look like a disappointed parent, but it was a tactic that worked well enough when drawing confessions from stubborn small-town teenagers. It was just as effective on Lance, too, because Lance dropped his eyes. 

"What you do need to do is to _go home_ , Lance. Gwen just lost her baby brother. She shouldn't be alone right now." Merlin kept his tone as gentle as he could, but it wasn't enough to convince Lance to leave. 

Merlin understood why Lance wanted to deal with the situation himself. Hell, when Merlin had lost his mum to a drunk driver when he'd been nothing more than a teenager, his magic had gone absolutely ballistic. Different people responded differently to grief, though outright defiance wasn't the reaction he'd expected from the otherwise mild-mannered deputy. He tried another tactic. 

"Do you trust me?"

Lance's expression was baleful.

"You know what I did before I came to Ealdor," Merlin said, stepping closer to Lance and lowering his voice to a bare whisper. "You know my track record."

Everyone in the Ealdor sheriff department had heard the rumours shrouding Merlin's departure from Mercia's homicide division -- that he'd been forced to leave under allegations of assaulting the primary suspect of the high profile sexual assault and murder of a teenage girl. 

And who could blame him? After four months of fruitless investigation, in the end, there had been insufficient conclusive evidence to keep Cenred Black locked up, never mind to actually charge him for the crime. The district attorney had been under pressure to tank the case, release the influential industrialist and to drop all the charges. The department had been up in arms, Freya Bastet's mother suffered a very public breakdown, and the city had been about to riot.

If Merlin had happened to take matters in his own hands, well, no one had cared too much about finding the person who'd left Black into a coma. The doctors had done the bare minimum of care when it became clear that Black wouldn't wake up for a very, very long time, if at all. 

The detectives investigating the attack on Black had done a half-assed job and deliberately contaminated any evidence that had been found. No one knew Merlin had done it, but the police commissioner had shaken Merlin's hand even as he strongly suggested that Merlin find work elsewhere. The district attorney's disapproval had been tempered by her glowing letter of reference and the recommendation that he take up the position of under-sheriff in Ealdor for a little while, until the tempers cooled down. 

Sometimes, Merlin wondered if he would've been treated worse if he'd killed Cenred Black outright.

Of course, it was all a rumour. Merlin Emrys, decorated police officer, couldn't possibly have stooped so low as to break the law.

But rumours were only that. Rumours. Unsubstantiated. On the surface, Merlin's spotless record and high case closing rate were nearly too good to be true, but the surface veneer of the penultimate policeman was all that Merlin had ever shown anyone.

"I don't let the bad guys get away," Merlin murmured, his words as much a promise as they would ever be. "If this kid is guilty -- _if_ \-- you know I'll do my absolute best to nail him to the wall."

"What if you can't?" Lance asked, his voice thick with tears, clearly unwilling to consider the possibility that Arthur Pendragon was innocent.

"Karma's a bitch," Merlin said with a shrug. It was the closest he would ever come to admitting the truth of the sort of man he really was.

Lance nodded. His gaze dropped down as if he remembered the gossip that had followed Merlin to Ealdor. Lance had been Merlin's most ardent supporter and defender against the other deputies, electing to believe the best in Merlin, but it seemed that he had never really forgotten the stories, because his mouth pulled into a grim, satisfied smile.

"You'll go home?" At Lance's dejected nod, Merlin waved Deputy Percival over. "Do me a favour and take Dulac home, yeah?"

"Yeah, sure, chief," Percival said, offering a half-assed salute before taking Lance's arm and pulling him along.

Merlin watched them go, making sure Lance left the building before he turned to the bank of surveillance monitors. Arthur was leaning back in his chair, now, half-slumped in a lazy, insouciant sprawl that screamed _guilty_ , but if the circumstances were different and Arthur were somewhere else, the pose was natural, comfortable, and innocent.

Merlin wasn't sure when Arthur Pendragon had been brought out of the holding cell and placed in the slightly more comfortable interrogation room, but at some point since his arrival, someone had cleaned him up and given him fresh clothes. Arthur's hair stuck up with a persistent cowlick, the white shirt was too tight around his broad shoulders, and he seemed surprisingly alert for someone who had witnessed the deaths of his closest friends and was now under suspicion for murder.

Experts claimed that fidgety prisoners were guilty ones. Different experts said that the calm suspects were the ones to watch out for. Experience had taught Merlin that reality wasn't as clear cut and a lot of what was taught in police interrogation courses at the academies were standard psychobabble straight out of whatever textbook was making the rounds.

The Pendragons founded Ealdor, and even though the family had left town for greater prospects and larger fortunes several generations ago, they still owned the land. The family's youngest, Arthur, was the proverbial golden boy who had everything: a Harvard pre-law degree with early admittance into the program, a guaranteed position with one of the top law firms in the country, and a clean-cut, pretty girlfriend of good family and breeding to keep on his arm on the way to the top.

The best psychologists that money could buy would swear up and down that someone with such a privileged upbringing wouldn't have any sociopathic tendencies, and therefore couldn't possibly be responsible for the gruesome deaths. But an expert's opinion didn't make it true.

Merlin helped himself to a fresh cup of too-strong drip coffee and surreptitiously glanced around. Most of the station's deputies were canvasing the neighbourhood, and the bullpen was nearly empty. The dispatcher had a baby at home, a wife on night shift at the hospital, and no sitter on call, so he'd be right on Lance's heels, turning in early for the night. A few of the newer staff would stay a little longer to keep an eye on things, but they'd duck out like the selfish bastards they were when they realized that Merlin was still on site.

Even without the ability to fritz the video surveillance, Merlin would be glad to see them go. The fewer people who came by to see the interrogation in person, the better.

Merlin picked up a few file folders, a pad of paper, and a tape recorder on his way to the rear of the building, nodding at the deputy on duty as he was let into the safe zone and buzzed in to the secure wing.

Arthur looked up from where he'd been staring at the table when Merlin walked in, but his expression didn't change much from the detached, shell-shocked numb boredom that had been clear on the video despite the grainy black-and-white security feed. Merlin kicked the door closed behind him, set his paperwork, recorder, and coffee cup down, and sat in the only other chair in the room.

Merlin waited until Arthur's eyes focussed on him before he spoke. "Mr. Pendragon, my name is Deputy Merlin Emrys. I'm the senior investigator on the case. Is there anything that I can offer you to make you more comfortable? Something to eat? Some water?"

Arthur glanced at the coffee cup. Merlin pretended not to see.

"Are you cold? I could get you a sweater," Merlin offered.

Arthur's eyes returned to him. His mouth quirked into an amused smirk. "Are you the good cop?"

Merlin snorted at the unexpected question. He leaned forward, elbows on the table, mimicking Arthur's pose. "No."

"Hm." Arthur tilted his head and studied Merlin through a veiled expression. "Is the plan to kill me with kindness, then?"

"Interesting choice of words," Merlin observed. He flipped open his notebook and scribbled out a few items to pick up at the grocery store.

"Too soon?" Arthur glanced down at the scrawl on the notebook and offered a cocky grin that was weakened by the brittle tone of his voice.

Merlin sighed inwardly. Arthur was such a fucking _kid_. Full of the arrogant cocksure swagger that came with being rich as sin. Merlin had grown up with these kinds of people, and he hated them so, so much. And yet, none of the white-hot rage he used to feel around these kinds of people was flickering to life. He couldn't rouse up any kind of emotions around Arthur, too concerned about the sort he'd have to admit to feeling in the first place.

He ran his hand on his head and tried not to think about how pretty Arthur was up close.

Merlin had noticed just how pretty when Arthur and his friends drove into town in a three-SUV caravan -- a shiny fire truck red Lexus LX, a gunmetal grey Land Rover, a jewel blue Cadillac Escalade -- three days ago. They'd lined up one after the other at Ealdor's two-pump gas station and bemoaned the lack of premium and how regular unleaded was going to give their mechanics conniptions when they returned to civilization. Arthur had laughed along with his friends, his eyes hidden behind flashy Ray Ban sunglasses, leaning against the bumper of the Land Rover in a seductive model pose that had left Merlin's mouth dry.

They'd cleared off less than thirty minutes later without too much trouble, though Old Man Ferguson had been fit to spit, afterward, complaining about those _Fucking no-good hooligans who don't respect other people's property_ to whomever would listen to him over beers and stale nuts at the Rising Sun.

Arthur's friends, never mind Arthur himself, left an impression wherever they went, and it wasn't necessarily a good one.

"So, do you care to tell me what happened over the last twenty-four hours?" Merlin asked, reaching for the tape recorder. He hadn't turned it on yet, but held it up in question.

Arthur shrugged, and Merlin turned it on, but instead of answering, he said, "I already gave the other deputy my statement."

"There were issues with your statement, Mr. Pendragon. I'm going to need clarification on a few things," Merlin said. He flipped one of the file folders open and peered over the typewritten sheet with Arthur's looping, elaborate signature on the bottom.

"Arthur."

"Hm?" Merlin glanced up.

"My father is Mr. Pendragon. I half-expect to see him looming behind me whenever I hear it. Call me Arthur." He leaned forward, elbows on the table, his back rounded like a predator on the attack.

Merlin cleared his throat. "I meant to ask, Mr. Pendragon," he said, squashing his amusement at Arthur's displeasure before it could be noticed, "I notice that you told the deputy who fingerprinted you that you weren't interested in a lawyer. Why is that?"

"I have nothing to hide," Arthur said, shrugging. A cocky smile pulled at his lips. "And, anyway, I'd like the experience of dealing with the police without someone in a monkey suit whispering in my ear. It'll look good at internship interviews when I tell them that I know what it's like to be sitting in the victim's seat."

"Experience," Merlin scoffed. "Your friends were brutally murdered, and all you can say is, it'll be good for your resume?"

"I didn't particularly like them," Arthur admitted.

Merlin grunted and glanced at his notes. "Not even your girlfriend?"

"My girlfriend?" Arthur asked, leaning back slightly. His brow furrowed in a little frown before he brightened in understanding. "You mean my beard. No, you misunderstand. I tell people that Elena is my girlfriend because that's all she is. A girl. My friend. An acquaintance, at best."

Merlin blinked, not sure he'd heard right. His voice was a little croaky when he said, "I've seen you two around town. You sure looked awfully chummy for two people who aren't fucking."

The group of college grads had shown up at the Rising Sun that first night, long after Old Man Ferguson had left, thank _God_ , or it would have set off another one of his interminable rants. Between them, they'd managed to empty one of the kegs on tap, drained a couple of bottles of whiskey shots, and left a pile of cold potato skins in the middle of the table, gathering flies. The whole time, up until closing, the group had come damned close to skirting a public indecency charge, the way they were carrying on. Merlin remembered Arthur's hand up Elena's skirt in particular, though that had been more out of envious jealousy than anything else.

Like the rest of the boys at the bar, Merlin made a crude remark about wanting to be the owner of that hand, but really, he'd have preferred being on the receiving end.

Arthur's smile became wry, but there was a shrewd glint in his eyes that Merlin wasn't so sure he liked. "You've noticed me, huh, deputy?"

Merlin didn't rise to the bait. He stared at Arthur in stony silence, and it wasn't long before Arthur scoffed and filled it with an explanation.

"My father likes Elena. He thinks it makes good business sense for me to be seen with someone of her impeccable pedigree. It'll make me look better with the partners, he says, than if I brought someone else to their little soirées. Someone else… like…" Arthur's eyes trailed down Merlin's torso before slowly dragging back up, and he bit his lower lip with an appreciative hum. "A cute boy. You'd do quite nicely. I imagine your ass would look just amazing in tight, tailored trousers."

It wasn't the first time that a suspect tried to ruffle Merlin's feathers during an interview. Some of the comments made had been downright crude, detailing how the suspects would slam their fat cocks up Merlin's skinny backside until he begged to suck their shit-covered dicks. Merlin had never given them so much as the satisfaction of seeing him react.

Arthur's flirtation was practically tame in comparison to the dirty talk from hardened convicts, but for some reason, the tips of Merlin's ears were burning.

"But anyway," Arthur was saying, leaning back as if he'd scored the winning point in a game Merlin hadn't even realized they were playing. "Elena might've been my beard, but I was definitely her cover. She was fucking Gwaine."

Merlin glanced at his notes with a furrowed brow. He'd miscalculated. The way they'd been carrying on, Merlin had been so certain that Arthur and Elena had been a thing. It was the leading theory among the deputies why Elena had been the first to die.

_Well,_ Merlin thought idly, _That explains why Gwaine reacted the way he did._ The motorcycle bad boy with too-long hair, a propensity for chasing anything that moved and wore a skirt, and for drinking as much tequila as the Rising Sun stocked on its shelves had certainly not seemed the sort to give a shit about anything he wasn't fucking. In retrospect, it all made sense to Merlin, now.

"You're the one who found her body?" Merlin asked, covering for his unsettled pause.

"Yes," Arthur said. He rubbed the palms of his hands together in the first physical sign that the situation bothered him at all.

"Tell me," Merlin said, licking his lips. "Tell me what happened. Everything you noticed. Don't leave out a detail."

 

* * *

 

"It was Gwaine's fucking fault," Arthur said, pausing for effect. He was surprised and unsure what to make of it when he saw Merlin's pink tongue run along his bottom lip. It was a sexy little gesture, completely out of place in the interrogation room in the dank back end of a police station in Nowhere, Podunk Country, USA, and it didn't go with Merlin's stony expression at all.

Arthur's eyes narrowed. He'd had his suspicions ever since the beginning, but no concrete proof either way, and he figured that maybe, just maybe, he'd have the answer to his questions if he waited long enough.

When Arthur was sure he had the deputy's attention, he launched into the story.

The girls had claimed the hot tub while the guys set up the BBQ. They were going to have steaks and charred corn with mint butter and some sort of jalapeno chilli bean salad with lime dressing, courtesy of Leon and Morgana, who had just opened their little restaurant in Camelot to rave critic reviews. It was their first vacation in who knew how long, because Leon had been cooking every night for the last six months since finishing his culinary program, and Morgana had been running the books and raising capital in that schmoozy way she'd learned from her bitch of a mom.

Gwaine was hilariously drunk by noon -- if he'd ever sobered up from their trip to the Rising Sun the night before, but by late afternoon, before the first steak ever hit the grill, he was positively maudlin and pissing everyone else off. Leon didn't want to hear him whining about how Elena's father hated Gwaine's guts, Valiant groaned and went to jack off somewhere else, and Elyan -- Elyan just looked kind of lost about it all, because he didn't know the full story, and no one was going to tell him --

 

* * *

 

"If Elyan didn't know anyone at the party, how did he get invited?" Merlin asked, interrupting Arthur's narrative. Elyan's presence hadn't made sense and complicated things. 

Arthur had the nerve to look annoyed. "Did you want me to tell the story or what?"

"Just answer the question first," Merlin said, tapping his pen on the table.

"Elyan knew _me_ ," Arthur said. "Back when we spent summers here, Elyan and I hung out together. I hadn't seen him in years, and I thought, why not invite the only genuine person I knew?"

"Is that the truth?"

Arthur snorted. "Fuck, no. We're a bunch of asshole frat boys looking to have a bit of fun with the uncultured slack-jawed yokel from around these parts. What the fuck do you think?"

"That I hope they lock you up for life," Merlin said, glowering. He jerked his hand rudely. "Go on with your story."

 

* * *

 

"Anyway, it doesn't matter," Arthur groused. He was more annoyed than he should be at the interruption. He waved a hand in the air. "Elyan was just there, all right? He didn't get what was going on, but Gwaine, hell. I hated his goddamned guts, but Elena's always been good to me, and the two of them were miserable."

He watched the deputy's eyebrows rise in interest and placed his hands palm down on the table.

Gwaine wanted to marry Elena. Everyone knew it except for Elena. Gwaine had made all sorts of elaborate plans with ridiculous contingencies to figure out how to sneak Elena out of her father's house so that he could drive across the state and head to Cathar, the capital of wedding chapels and casinos. This was supposed to be the weekend they got hitched in a big fuck-you to Elena's asshole dad, except --

Except Elena never let Gwaine get the proposal out, almost as if she'd known it was coming, and she probably had known, the way women always seemed to know these things. Arthur had had a feeling that Elena just wasn't ready to throw her expensive lifestyle away in exchange for the cockroach-infested apartment over the tattoo parlour where Gwaine lived.

So that was why it was Gwaine's fault. He was too drunk to get on his knees and ask Elena to marry him like a goddamn man. Everyone else had deserted him and Elyan was useless anyway, too keen to be everyone's friend and too nervous to speak without stuttering.

Arthur had gone around the house to crash the girl's hot tub party, only to be told that Elena had gone inside to change her tampon. "Don't be fucking crude, Morgana," Arthur had said, and his cousin shrugged a bare shoulder, her left tit rising above the waterline, not caring about being naked in front of everyone, never mind family.

Arthur had headed inside, shouted for Elena, but she didn't answer. He checked the bathrooms, Gwaine's rooms, then her room --

 

* * *

 

"And there she was, laid out on the bed like a gutted turkey, a line down her chest from collarbone to pubic bone," Arthur said, drawing a finger slowly down his own body. 

Merlin traced the movement with his eyes, unable to look away, completely mesmerized by Arthur's voice.

"Guts everywhere. Bone glistening with blood. Skin curling away where it was sliced clean. It was quite impressive," Arthur said. "Surgical precision with the brutality of a cold-hearted butcher. Almost like a piece of art, really. Elena made me think of one of those fancy puppets, slumped down on the bed, her cords cut."

"A marionette," Merlin said, his voice a little hoarse.

"Pardon?" Arthur asked, distracted. He seemed to register what Merlin said and waved two fingers in the air in dismissal. "Oh, yes. That. And anyway, more's the pity. The bed was soaked through -- there'll be no saving the mattress and the wood supports will rot through, I suppose. We'll have to replace the entire thing."

Merlin swallowed a strangled sound. He knew he should be appalled at Arthur's cold, detached manner, but it was very attractive to him. With a force of will, he managed to find a scrap of himself that was still human and scoffed disdainfully. "That was your girlfriend, Mr. Pendragon. Your _beard_. And you talk about her like she's a slab of meat."

"Technically…" Arthur spread his hands and shrugged.

Merlin closed his eyes, forcing himself to breathe slowly. He focused on the words he'd jotted down. "Is this when you claim to have seen yellow eyes through the window?"

"Oh, no, that was a little later. I was in shock, you see," Arthur said, pausing for effect. "It really was a gruesome sight. I'd never seen anything like that before."

Merlin waited. Arthur let the silence linger for several more seconds, nearly reaching the end of Merlin's patience, before speaking again.

"It was a glimpse, really," Arthur said, almost contrite. He leaned elbows on the table and brought his clasped hands to his mouth, his expression becoming distant, almost dreamy. "I was about to scream for help. I turned just so, saw something out of the ordinary in the mirror, and went to look. I'm sure I wouldn't have noticed under the usual circumstances, but it was daylight, and it was awfully bright."

"What was it?" Merlin asked, remembering the moment well.

Arthur had stood in the doorway with the frozen posture of a deer in the headlights of an oncoming truck, halfway between shouting for his friends and captivated by something just out of the line of sight of the window. Arthur had shifted his stance to lean forward in curiosity, slowly turning around. He'd been startled, his mouth dropping open, his eyes wide with surprise, and for a brief moment, he'd seemed… _delighted_.

But then his friends had shouted for Arthur to rejoin the party, and Arthur had snapped out of his mesmerism, pulling himself together enough to call for help in a tone that was not half as frantic as it should have been.

"Eyes," Arthur said, as a matter-of-fact. "Bright, yellow eyes. Burning white-gold like the hot noontime sun. I thought it was my imagination at first, but then, they blinked, just like a normal person blinks, and it was… amazing, actually."

Merlin said nothing. He leaned in his chair, a little dumbfounded. He hadn't heard the mythical Golden Eyes described with such reverence before. If anything, all of the surviving victims of the urban legend had spoken of him with a quiet, terrified whisper, as if to even think of him bore the risk of the monster bearing down on them.

He cleared his throat, forcing himself to focus.

"Right. Eyes." He skimmed through his notebook. "Did you happen to see a face?"

"Of course not," Arthur scoffed. "Elena's room abutted to the forest, and the gardener clearly failed to trim back the shrubbery. My father won't be pleased by the lack of attention to details. I'm sure he won't be giving George his usual Christmas bonuses this year."

Merlin didn't know if he should be relieved or not. Instead, he opted for annoyance at Arthur's flippant answer and asked, "What happened after you shouted for help?"

 

* * *

 

"Understandably, everyone freaked the fuck out," Arthur said, suppressing a grin when he saw Merlin's reaction to his words. If his expensive private school education had ever been worth anything, it was in seducing men while speaking dirty with the proper enunciation of an upper class accent.

He leaned forward, crossing his arms over the table, hunching his shoulders. He was tired -- very tired. It had been a long, draining weekend with his so-called friends, their rather nasty and violent deaths, the rude and rough police treatment, and the lengthy incarceration before someone finally showed up to do more than merely take his statement. He wasn't entirely certain what time it was.

Arthur ran his hand through his hair, letting his arm drop down onto the table. 

He wasn't exaggerating. Everyone had lost their collective minds. Gwaine, stunned wordless for the first time in his entire life, had eventually snapped and went on a murderous rant. He'd had to be restrained by Leon and Valiant before he went out and did something stupid -- like killing someone and getting arrested, getting himself killed, or worse. Morgana, who never really liked Elena in the first place, broke down sobbing -- it had sounded fake. Vivian was the one who had fainted dead away, nearly landing in the pool of blood dripping from the soggy duvet. Mithian, who had always been the most sensible of the lot, had turned away from the sight and buried her face in Elyan's shoulder, much to Elyan's startled and confused pleasure, since she was the whole reason he'd accepted Arthur's invitation to the cottage in the first place.

Eventually, at some point in the chaos of calming Gwaine down, ignoring Valian's cracks about _Nice tits, I didn't know they stayed perky after_ , avoiding stepping on the vapid blonde on the floor and finding Valium to calm Morgana the fuck down, they managed to sort themselves out to suggest, "Let's call the police."

"But you didn't," Deputy Merlin Emrys said. "There are no records --"

"Just because there are no records of any phone calls made doesn't mean there weren't any attempts. The family cottage is well out in the wilderness and cellular reception range. And, if your colleagues are halfway competent, they'll have discovered that the hard line had been cut," Arthur said. He noted how Merlin didn't so much as raise an eyebrow, never mind write anything down. It was highly likely that the deputies had already found the broken lines to the cottage and that Merlin had been well aware of this fact before he'd even asked.

Still, it was strange, because it had taken Arthur and Leon the better part of a half hour to figure out that there was nothing wrong with the telephone box hooked up inside the garage, near the circuit breakers. The physical line to the house itself had been sheared neatly in two some five hundred meters from the front porch. Given how the sheriff's department had been canvassing the area for evidence and body parts when Arthur had been escorted away, he doubted that checking the phone line had been very high on their list of priorities.

His eyes narrowed suspiciously, but he was distracted by Merlin's next question. "There were three high-end SUVs parked around the cottage, not counting Elyan's pick-up truck. One of you could have driven closer to town and made the phone call then."

"Would have, could have, didn't," Arthur said snappishly. "Were you even at the cottage? Perhaps you might have noticed that all of the tires were flat, and that the starter motors on each had been completely… _cannibalized_."

Merlin raised a brow. Amusement filled his expression for the barest flicker of an instant before he dryly said, "I'm surprised you know what a starter motor is. I would have thought you'd left such pedantic things to your mechanic."

"Oh, fuck you," Arthur said, catching himself at the last moment. He was normally never this ruffled. Hell, even Elena's death had barely scratched the surface of the emotionless wall he'd built around himself. He'd been surprised to see her dead, of course, but nothing else had sunk in after that. "You're one to talk. You're not from around here, are you, Deputy Emrys? The people around these parts wouldn't even know how to _spell_ 'pedantic'."

Merlin leaned forward slowly, a beatific, companionable expression on his face. Just as Arthur thought he'd broken Merlin's hard exterior, Merlin said, "We're not talking about me, and insulting the locals isn't going to get you anywhere, Mr. Pendragon. Why don't you continue?"

Arthur rubbed his face with his hands, and, in a fit of pique, took Merlin's cup of coffee. It was terrible -- something in the water, or maybe they'd burned the grains -- and lukewarm, but it was exactly the sort of jolt he needed right now. Merlin hadn't tried to grab the cup back from him, though, so Arthur considered it a win.

"We talked about walking," Arthur said. "Valiant started to go, said he'd call and all that rot, but he's a self-serving bastard at the best of times, and everyone knew he was just going to take off."

"Hm," Merlin said, jotting something down in his notebook. Arthur couldn't make out what it was.

Valiant was a bully, and by definition, he was a coward. He'd started running down the long gravel driveway as soon as they realized that all the cars were ruined. Vivian had yelled after him, swearing up and down that he'd never see her naked ever again if he didn't come back _Right the fuck now, you asshole_. Valiant had slowed down before the bend in the road, looking over his shoulder at her as if to decide whether her threat was real -- or worth missing out on, Arthur wasn't sure, and neither did he care -- when…

"Just like that," Arthur said. "He stumbled into the copse of trees at the sharp edge at the far end of the drive and was gone. Leon was the only one of us who had any good sense, saying that we shouldn't go anywhere alone, there's a killer out there. Viv's having her hissy fit, Elyan's distracted by her bouncing, naked tits, Gwaine tells her that she's got some blood in her hair, and Gwaine and Leon start after Val."

Arthur made a gesture in the air. He stopped short of making a crash-landing motion with his hand, though he could picture it clearly in his head.

Gwaine and Leon hadn't reached the rise in the gravel road when there had been a loud yelp that was strangled halfway through. Not a second, Valiant's head went flying chin over crown through the air, splattering blood all over the imported white gravel. It landed with a sick, but satisfying, crunch, bounced once, and rolled all the way down the incline in the rough road before wobbling to a stop at a screaming Vivian's feet.

 

* * *

 

"We got the message loud and clear," Arthur said, his tone coloured with amusement more than the fear Merlin expected. That Merlin _craved_. Arthur raised an imperious brow. "We were in a horror movie so bad it didn't even rate the bottom of the B-reel barrel. First, the cheating girlfriend of the hero dies. Then the big, stupid athlete who thinks he can get to safety."

He leaned in as if he were sharing a secret, his grin lopsided and a little manic.

"Who do you think will be next?"

Merlin shifted in his seat. 

As a homicide detective for the Mercian metropolitan police force, Merlin had sat across the table to a wide variety of criminals. They'd irritated him, they'd pissed him off, they'd withered under his interrogation tactics, however dubious they were, but never once, not until now, had Merlin ever felt unsettled.

Arthur didn't really care for a response, because his grin disappeared and he rapped a knuckle on the metal table. The knock resounded with a deep, thrumming ring, and he slumped back in his seat, the half-drunk coffee cradled in one hand.

"We went back to the house. Regrouped," Arthur said, making it sound a whole lot better than it had really been. Merlin remembered the screaming, the sobbing, the squirming, freaked-the-fuck out disgust on Leon, Gwaine's strange fascination with the mostly-clean laceration. Though clearly alarmed, Arthur had been the only one holding it together, and had somehow successfully managed to herd his friends into the house.

Arthur paused dramatically. Merlin said nothing. The silence drew out, the recorder ticked on, and when Arthur spoke again, it was with the controlled detachment of someone who had compartmentalized his emotions.

"We were two down for the count, two more by proxy from the shock. Armed ourselves with whatever could pass as a weapon while Leon's steaks were burning to ash on the grill. We talked about going out in groups and finding the fucker killing our friends." Arthur paused. He snorted, as if amused, and said, "But when it came right down to it, we had two tennis rackets between us, a kid's plastic bow and arrow set from when I was four or five years old, and Leon's Chef knives, and he swore up and down that he'd kill us first before he'd let any of us touch them.

"Morgana had maybe a couple of kickboxing classes under her belt from back when it was the trendy thing to do, Vivian was more horrified of the prospect of breaking a fingernail, Gwaine managed to spear himself in the foot with the only unbroken arrow we could find. Mithian probably had the best chance from amongst us, because she had a blue belt in Judo or Jiu Jitsu or whatever it was. No one so much as looked at the antique revolver in the glass case over the fireplace, but then again I'm not sure it even worked properly, anyway. And that's when Elyan said…"

_What about the gardener's shed?_

Merlin remembered that moment well. 

The gardener's shed was out of sight from the main house, tucked away on the other side of the unused two-car garage. If Merlin were honest, he'd forgotten about it too.

"Cue the Great Garden Tools Debate of 2016. On one side is Mithian, Elyan, and Gwaine, arguing the pro of Garden Tools As Weapons. Morgana, a simpering Vivian, and Leon, by default of being engaged to Morgana, stand stoutly behind the _Are you all fucking idiots_ banner," Arthur said, once again flippant. "I'm waiting for one of them to realize that whoever leaves the safety of the house and disappears in the forest to look for weapons, that's the next person to die. It's like some sort of horror movie rule, or something."

Merlin shifted in his seat. He stretched his arm on the table, crooked his elbow, and rested his chin in his hand, using the gesture to hide the amused smirk he could barely contain.

"Vivian obsessed with her fingernails all of a sudden, Morgana wasn't going anywhere Leon wasn't going, too, Elyan had practically glued himself to Mithian's side, to the point where she couldn't turn around without tripping into him. I was so embarrassed for him. Gwaine was sober by that point and angry as fuck, so we went."

"You went," Merlin said as flatly as he could. "Very courageous of you."

"Fuck, no," Arthur scoffed. "Nothing of the sort. Viv's caterwauling was getting on my nerves. Gwaine was fit to explode. I had to get him out before he took it out on my mother's antique vases."

Merlin flipped the pages in his notebook. "Isn't your mother dead?"

Frost seemed to settle onto Merlin's starchy brown uniform as the silence stretched without an answer. Merlin looked up to see Arthur staring at him with blue eyes gone black with suppressed rage, his fingers digging into the coffee cup.

He met Arthur's glare unflinchingly. _Bring it on_ , Merlin wanted to say. _My mother's dead, too. My dad. My uncle. My best friend. I know death like you never will._  
  
But he didn't, and encouraged, "So. The garden shed."

"Never made it there," Arthur said slowly, every word clipped. He relaxed only marginally, but some of the chill ebbed from the stuffy interrogation room as the air conditioning fans kicked on. "It was on fire. Raging inferno. Gwaine got the hose from the back but it was cut in half, and by that point everyone in the house was screaming."

The embers were still smouldering when Ealdor's sheriff department arrived on the scene. Arthur's statement was that the little shed burned for hours before finally crumbling to ashes, and at no time were they able to get inside to get to the garden tools. Merlin was unable to verify the claim because he'd been on the other side of the property at the time. It had been sheer coincidence that Morgana and Leon were on the sprawling rear patio just as he'd rounded the corner and climbed the stairs to find the couple trying, for some godforsaken reason, to save the steaks.

They'd seen him, and Merlin hadn't been able to let them go.

"And then what happened?" Merlin asked, curious, because he hadn't been able to stick around to see the outcome.

 

* * *

 

Arthur stared down into his cup of coffee. He frowned, trying to remember the sequence of events, and shook his head.

"I'm not sure. I ran back to the house. I thought that Gwaine was right with me -- I heard him, I mean, he couldn't have been far behind, but it wasn't until after that I realized we'd lost him."

Arthur closed his eyes, replaying it in his head.

The fairy lights were swinging in the breeze and the patio furniture cast long shadows in the darkening sky. Charcoal-black smoke from overcooked steaks that were more hockey pucks than flesh puffed out of the corners of the stainless steel propane grill. There was a bloody hand smeared on the cover, right next to the temperature meter. The oversized spatula and tongs were embedded in a nearby tree, the expensive ceramic plates Morgana insisted on using were buried in the walls of the cottage, in the patio frame, in… Morgana.

A broken piece had gotten her in the head, bifurcating her face nearly in two, eyes wide with shock, mouth open in a half-scream. Several other pieces of cracked ceramic stuck out of her torso as if she'd been turned into a pincushion doll, and she lay on her knees, slumped, her head back, arms at her side. Miraculously, she hadn't completely collapsed, and the pool of blood spread around her in uneven circles, dripping through the cracks of the polished deck.

Leon was bent in half the wrong way, every bone in his body snapped in their opposite directions, his head twisted around on his spine. He'd been stuck through the patio umbrella like a piece of shish kebab, and gravity pulled him around in a slow, circle, as if he were the centerpiece on a charcuterie.

And Vivian, snide, simpering, wailing Vivian, she'd been on her knees where she slipped in Morgana's blood, screaming and crying as if she herself had been Golden Eyes' next victim.

Arthur kind of wished she had been.

"Is that right?" Merlin asked, sly, like a cat who had caught the canary.

Arthur snapped himself out of it and ignored the way his cock had hardened at the memory. The way the fading sun made the fresh blood glisten, the _emptiness_ in Morgana's eyes, the beauty in the creative deconstruction of Leon's body. Something about the rushed tableau -- and it had been rushed, there was no doubt about that -- spoke of a barely reined-in violence that Arthur ached to have in his possession.

"Don't put words in my mouth," Arthur scowled. "If you'd been there, you'd have thought the same thing. Vivian had a voice like claws on chalkboard at the best of times, but when she screamed, it hit a register that only dogs could hear."

Merlin snorted unexpectedly, and the break in decorum did a great deal to ease Arthur's irritation.

He leaned forward, letting the coffee cup clink on the metal table, and pushed it aside. "She died next, did you know that? Right in front of us. Oh, it didn't happen right away. Not for hours. It was late, and everyone was exhausted from riding the adrenaline for too long. Viv was wired, jerking at the slightest sound, and every time she _meep_ ed like a terrified kitten, she'd start sobbing and hiccuping. We were getting pissed off. All of us. She. Wouldn't. Shut. The. Fuck. Up."

Arthur ignored Merlin's raised eyebrow.

He'd hated Vivian. Hell, she was dead, now, and he still hated her. He hated her dolled-up look, the careless way she dropped thousands of dollars on a single outfit, crashed her car one day only to get an identical new one the next. She went out of her way to make people cry, hung out with those who could increase her social prestige, fucked her professors for better grades despite being in a steady relationship with Valiant, and somehow, inexplicably, got away scot-free after a drunken hit-and-run.

How much of it was daddy-dear cleaning up the mess, or Vivian learning how to do it herself, Arthur didn't know, and he didn't fucking care. So when Gwaine had groused, "Viv needs to calm her fucking tits," and Mithian, still shaky from seeing her best friend bleeding out all over the deck, had said, "I might have some weed left in my bag," Arthur had muttered, "That's not enough to shut her up."

They'd looked at each other then -- all of them, that was, except for Elyan, who didn't know Viv the way the rest of them did and was doing his utmost best to ply her with attention, much to Mithian's rising jealousy -- and had scattered to get something that would knock Vivian out long enough for the rest of them to figure out what to do.

Mithian didn't just have weed; she had over-the-counter sleeping pills. Gwaine had some mushrooms, because, _Of course he did_. Valiant had prescription opiates for his still-recovering post-football-injury shoulder surgery in his duffel bag. Morgana had Valium, because she'd always been a tightly-wound ball of anxiety on the best of days. Leon was a squeaky-clean Boy Scout who never took anything stronger than aspirin, so Arthur never bothered to look through his things, and instead searched through Elena's suitcase for the amphetamines he'd stashed there before they'd taken the drive down, because he'd never be caught dead with it in his belongings.

"Well, that explains the pharmacy we found in the living room," Merlin said mildly. "Were you going to let her pick what she wanted, or were you going to give her a cocktail?"

"Fuck you. You weren't there," Arthur snapped. He saw something unidentifiable shift in Merlin's eyes, but before he could identify what it was, Merlin looked down. Arthur followed Merlin's glance to his clenched fists.

Arthur drew his hands away from the table and put them on his lap, out of sight. He took several deep breaths, regretting his loss of control. He'd taken a couple of psychology courses as part of his pre-law program, and he knew that he'd failed whatever test Merlin had put him through.

Pride had prevented him from calling a lawyer, but it hadn't stopped him from calling his father anyway. Uther couldn't be bothered to come right away and wouldn't arrive until morning, and in the meantime, Arthur was on his own. Arthur gritted his teeth. He'd handle the situation. He'd exonerate himself. He just needed a moment to think.

Surprisingly, it was Merlin who gave him the way out, his words sympathetic, nearly kind, with a touch of earnestness that threw Arthur off, making him suspicious all over again, though he couldn't fathom _why_. 

"We don't have the medical examiner's report yet, so we don't know if anything was actually ingested," Merlin said.

"We never actually got that far," Arthur admitted. The delay had been because none of them could decide how to administer the drugs -- force them down Viv's throat, or hand her the pills one by one until she settled the fuck down. Saint Elyan had vetoed all of their options, and when Arthur had glared at him, Elyan had awkwardly suggested that they just knock her out with a rubber mallet, _Or something_.

"Fantastic fucking idea," Gwaine had said, "Except all the fucking tools burned down in the fucking gardener's shed, and fuck whoever thought it was a good idea to build it on the other side of the fucking property --"

Vivian's shriek had startled them, then; high pitched and terrified, with a curious, gurgling note --

And when they'd rushed into the living room where they'd left her staring blankly at late night infomercials on the television, she hadn't been alone.

"Oh?" Merlin sat up straighter, his interest renewed. "Who was with her?"

"Who do you think?" Arthur asked, his eyes dark.

 

* * *

 

Merlin had always taken precautions in the past. The last thing he'd ever wanted to do was to be found out. It would ruin his career, for one. For another, he didn't particularly fancy spending the rest of his life waiting for his execution date under the gloomy pall of a maximum security prison.

He'd always had one rule. Just the one. 

_Never let anyone see_.

The only exception to that rule were the victims who were about to die gruesome, bloody deaths, though Merlin had never let them see _him_. Never him -- always Golden Eyes.

Golden Eyes was a persona that he'd built back when he was a kid with big ears, a dorky haircut, and a too-big smile for his face. His best friend, Will, had needed a monster for the Dungeons & Dragons game, but all of his creations fell short of the mark. He'd turned to Merlin, and between the two of them, they'd come up with a shadow-shrouded, nearly intangible creature with the vague shape of a man, a voice that sounded like glass crackling over a fire, and eyes that shone like King's gold in the dark.

Golden Eyes didn't become an urban legend until many, many years later. Will's older brother had brought a few of his frat members home over the Christmas break, and on New Year's Eve, when their parents had gone out to a party, they'd gotten shit-faced, piss-drunk.

At fourteen, Merlin had been a lightweight, but Will, who had always snuck alcohol whenever his parents weren't around, had lasted long enough to see the party shift from drinking until they were all smashed, to bong hits that were passed around during a dick-measuring contest. Somehow -- Merlin was never clear on the details -- Will had ended up outside, half-naked, bleeding from a deep gash on his head where he must have slipped and knocked himself out. 

Merlin had woken up, disoriented, needing to pee. He'd never made it as far as the bathroom, too distracted by the sight of many naked male bodies sprawled unconscious in the game room. He'd started to jerk off, only to realize it was pretty cold in the house, and had tracked it to the partially-open patio doors in the kitchen, and --

He'd found Will frozen to death in the sub-zero temperatures, his head wound crowning him in a halo of blood in the snow.

UrbanLegendsOnline.com, the foremost authority on modern myths, recorded the first mention of Golden Eyes on January 1st, 2000, at what had been the brutal murder of five young men at a suburban home in an otherwise quiet suburb in Mercia. There had been two survivors of the attack -- a young boy who had died that same night from injuries sustained during his escape, and another boy, who had hidden under the deck with the pool equipment and had nearly frozen to death.

Officially, the New Year's Eve mass murder was a cold case, unresolved after all these years, opened and reopened again and again whenever Golden Eyes featured in crime scenes where a survivor was found. Unofficially, Merlin had buried the lead so deep that no one would ever suspect that he was Golden Eyes.

He had more blood on his hands than what had actually been attributed to him, and nearly all of the survivors had been arrested and found guilty of murder based on the evidence Merlin had left behind. Those who weren't incarcerated ended up committing suicide, drinking themselves into a perpetual stupor, or checking themselves into a psychiatric hospital for the remainder of their days.

Merlin's identity was safe. The legend of Golden Eyes could only grow.

Merlin had always wanted to know what his victims saw when he made an appearance, but he'd never had his curiosity satisfied. No one had ever been lucid enough. No one until Arthur.

"Golden Eyes," Merlin breathed, hoping he sounded doubtful enough that Arthur wouldn't notice how excited he was.

Arthur's distant look flickered over to him, unreadable. Arthur didn't respond right away, and when he did, it was with a slow, certain nod.

Merlin pulled himself together enough to remember to play his role -- to _do his job_ , damn it -- and clicked his pen a few times. "So, you did see a face, and you're contradicting yourself --"

"I didn't see a face the first time I saw him, and I didn't see a face this time, either," Arthur cut in. "All I saw was something that looked vaguely humanoid with bright yellow eyes."

Merlin put his pen down. His disappointment was real, though he hid the real reason with a roll of his eyes. Luckily, Arthur misinterpreted the cause and made a small, offended noise.

"I know what I sound like. A shadowy figure with yellow eyes. It sounds like something clean out of _Supernatural_ , but with better CGI," Arthur said. He shook his head minutely. "But it wasn't like that. Not even close."

" _Supernatural_ ," Merlin scoffed. He hated that show. Real demons didn't have eyes that glowed. The writers of the show fucked up their research on a regular basis and got so much shit wrong.

"He wasn't in a mask," Arthur said, _a propos_ of nothing, suddenly intense. "Not a bodysuit. The whole shape of him was indistinct enough that I'd never be able to pick him out of a lineup based on his build. The edges were black mist blowing in the breeze from the open door. It was creepy, like being lost in the moor, with nothing but filtered moonlight through the fog."

Merlin's eyes glazed over as he listened. Arthur had a gift for storytelling, that was for certain; no wonder he was going into law. He would have juries everywhere wrapped around his little finger, hanging on to his every word.

"I couldn't make out his features. I got lost in my own head trying. It was like falling through an endless abyss. There's nothing in that absolute blackness to focus on. Nothing except his eyes. Shaped like human eyes, no white to them, no iris. Just a golden light."

Merlin swallowed. He opened and closed his mouth a few times only to realize that he was at a loss. Arthur was describing a monster with the reverence of someone studying a prized work of art. His cheeks were flushed, his eyes dilated, and he squirmed unconsciously in his seat, like he wanted to touch himself.

"Right, okay." Merlin coughed. He stared at Arthur until Arthur's twitching became less sensual and more discomforted. "I'll let you think about what you just told me for a second."

He closed the file folders, snapped his notebook shut, turned off the tape recorder, and grabbed the empty coffee cup. He stood up slowly, ignoring Arthur's wide eyes and parted lips, and walked out of the interrogation room, careful to make sure that his aching hard cock was hidden from sight.

He locked the door behind it; leaned against the wall for a second to catch his breath. He dumped everything on an unused table in the corridor and thankfully didn't run into anyone on the way to the men's room.

The lights flickered in response to his agitated magic when he walked in. His reflection stared back at him as if it were a reproaching, unsatisfied, completely tousled sex demon, and he had a moment to look at himself, horrified by the sight. How had he let the interrogation get to him like this? How could he let a suspect see him in this state? Had anyone seen --

The toilet flushed. Merlin ducked into an empty stall and locked the door behind him in time to avoid whoever emerged. He rested his forehead against the cool metal door, listening as the other man did a cursory wash of his hands, lingered in front of the mirror, and said, "Looking good, man. I'd fuck me. Sefa don't know what she's missing. She'll regret dumping me."

Merlin peered through the crack in the door, watching Gilli fluff his hair a few times before finally leaving the men's room. Merlin sincerely hoped that Gilli was leaving.

Merlin exhaled slowly, closing his eyes. His hand slid from the toilet partition to rub his cock through his trousers. It wasn't the first time he'd tossed one off while on duty since he started working at Ealdor's sheriff station, but this time, the coarse sensation made it feel like it was someone else's hand. 

_Arthur_.

Except it wasn't believable. It wasn't real. Arthur was a spoilt rich boy who likely had never done any hard work in his entire life. He wouldn't have rough hands. Before Merlin knew it, he'd unbuckled his belt, opened up his trousers, and --

_Holy God_.

He almost came right then and there. He squeezed the base of his cock until the sensation passed and breathed in through his nose until he thought he could make this last. He wasn't a fourteen-year-old brat jacking off every half hour to the memory of all those naked frat boys, their bodies and their limp dicks covered in blood.

Merlin remembered the moment Arthur had described in vivid detail, except from the other side. Mithian, her hair pulled back in a crazed ponytail, eyes and cheeks smeared with runny mascara, both hands covering her face and muffling her scream as she scrambled to get away. Gwaine, pale beneath a three-day scruff of beard, torn between a backward scramble and a forward lunge, neither brave nor cowardly, but drowning in a deep pool of terror. Elyan, too stunned to move, to make a sound, to blink, to breathe.

But most of all, he remembered Arthur, who had captured all of Merlin's attention the instant he'd run into the room. 

His hair in disarray. His clothing dirty and torn. The bloody shirtsleeve he must never have had noticed. The footprints he had tracked into the house from running through the puddle of Morgana's blood. 

His pupils blown not with terror, but the height of arousal, his perfect pink mouth open, wide and slack and ready to swallow down Merlin's cock. The way his pretty little tongue had darted out to moisten his lips just as Merlin's shadow-hand had tightened around Vivian's throat, making her bleed.

Merlin fucked his hand the way he would fuck Arthur's mouth if Arthur were on his knees in front of him, holding onto the memory of a weakening Vivian struggling for freedom but losing the fight as her blood dripped down Merlin's arm. He imagined the bloody dribble onto Arthur's face, following the contours of his perfect cheekbones, the sharp line of his jaw, the sinewy curve of his throat, to finally pool in his collarbones. The door to the toilet partition jiggled and jangled noisily with every thrust, squeaking threateningly whenever Merlin jerked particularly hard.

Merlin bit his fist rather than to cry out at his orgasm, splattering come all over the thin metal door.

He must have blacked out for a second, because he saw stars.

"Fuck," he muttered. He straightened up hastily, using the flimsy toilet paper to wipe uselessly at the mess on the door. He gave up and used his magic to clean everything up, from the splotch of dripping semen on the _Call me baby_ graffiti scratched on the bathroom door and the pool growing on the floor. He checked to make sure he didn't have a wet spot on his trousers, either, because the tan uniform was absolute shit at covering up stains.

Reasonably sure that he was decent again, Merlin emerged to see himself in the mirror, looking even more ruffled than before. He did a better job of tucking in his shirt, straightened his belt out, and ran fingers through his hair before giving it up as a bad job all around, since his hair never behaved, even on a good day.

A familiar tingle was nesting under his skin and growing with every passing second, and, for once, Merlin couldn't decide if he wanted to find someone to fuck or someone to kill.

 

* * *

 

Arthur stared at the door, dumbfounded, when the deputy stormed out, leaving behind a confusing chastisement.

_I'll let you think about what you told me for a second_.

Oh, Arthur had thought about it. He'd thought about it a lot. Even before he described to Merlin what he'd seen, Arthur knew exactly what he was feeling.

Turned on as fuck.

The way Golden Eyes had held Vivian against him. With possessive, territorial strength that was both cruel and unyielding. The ghostly hand around her throat, the invisible claws or hidden knife drawing pinpricks of blood. Arthur had been completely mesmerized by how the shadowy tendrils of Golden Eyes' body caressed Vivian's pale skin, like feathers bristling in the wind.

The sight had sent a shiver down Arthur's spine. That shiver settled in his groin and stayed there. If not for how tightly he'd held Gwaine back from lunging at Golden Eyes, Arthur was sure he would have yanked his dick out and jerked off to the show of Vivian's slow, torturous murder.

Arthur wasn't exactly sure how long Golden Eyes had taken to slice a long line from Vivian's throat down her chest, stopping short of her pantyline. Her clothes had fallen away as if cut by a surgeon's knife, revealing artificially augmented breasts that split apart as her skin was neatly split. He'd been too fascinated by the way her blood filled the seam only to spill down in long, watery rivulets to realize that she'd been crying and begging for help. And when Golden Eyes' shadowy hand had pushed up beneath Vivian's ribcage and into her heaving chest, Arthur had bitten his lower lip in anticipation. His patience had been rewarded by the sight of Vivian's heart beating several more times as her body slowly crumpled to the ground.

Seeing her dead on the expensive Persian carpet was what had finally broken them all out of their paralysis. Elyan had cried out and lunged forward; Gwaine had torn himself from Arthur's grasp to join in on the attack. But in a heartbeat that had been shorter than Vivian's last, Golden Eyes had melted into the darkness behind him and was gone, leaving the open patio door behind.

Arthur had followed the others into the night, only to stop short with them, when the absolute darkness kept them from going any further. But fear wasn't what had stopped Arthur from following Golden Eyes into the woods. It was the hard as fucking steel boner he'd gotten from watching Vivian's murder. 

He'd gone to the bathroom under the pretence of being sick, but instead, he turned the water tap on to mute the sound of his too-dry palm violently jerking himself off. He'd come so hard that he'd collapsed onto his knees, nearly knocking himself out on the soiled toilet seat.

Arthur wrung his hands and hung his head. He fidgeted on the hard seat. He pointedly did not look at the two-way mirror in case someone was watching, and he refused to acknowledge the video camera poorly hidden in the upper left corner of the room, because anything he did could be misinterpreted and used against him. It was the reminder that rubbing his own crotch while being interrogated for multiple murders would not look good for him that kept his hands clenched and away from his lap.

"Jesus fucking Christ," Arthur hissed quietly. He closed his eyes so tightly that bursts of light exploded behind his eyelids.

He shouldn't think about the murder. He shouldn't replay it in his head. He definitely shouldn't think about his inexplicable sexual response to… to the act of killing, to Golden Eyes himself. That way laid madness.

Instead, he reached for the analytical mind that Uther Pendragon, senior partner of Pendragon, LeFay and Gorlois, had moulded him to have. His father had told him repeatedly that he planned for Arthur to take over the most prestigious criminal defence law firm in Albion so that he could retire young enough to still have all of his hair and virility. It was time that Arthur applied his burgeoning skills to benefit himself, for a change.

He calmly checked off all the ways that he could prove his innocence in all the murders. He invented new, plausible ones in case he needed them. That he was the sole survivor was damning enough without adding a motive, but there was no reason for him to want to kill anyone, however much he hated some of them. He was cooperating with the investigation, he hadn't demanded a lawyer yet, and only the most incompetent of forensic examination would send him to prison.

He wasn't worried.

However, the more he went over the interrogation, the more Arthur realized that he was missing an important piece of information. He'd been mirandized; he'd waived his rights. He'd given his statement; police procedure called for the investigating officers to gather as much evidence on the scene as possible before questioning a suspect.

The Ealdor's sheriff department couldn't possibly have finished canvassing the crime scene already. Arthur shouldn't even be speaking to someone until he'd cooled his heels for several more hours. The more he thought about it, the more he realized that Deputy Merlin Emrys wasn't handling the interview as if Arthur was a suspect. He'd been invited to observe on the other side of an interrogation room mirror often enough to know that Merlin should be far more aggressive with Arthur than he had been.

Did that mean that the deputy believed that Arthur was innocent? Some of Merlin's comments had been barbed enough that Arthur wasn't so sure that was the case. Did he… Maybe…

Arthur shook his head. No. He didn't want to give himself false hope by over-examining the situation. Different police officers had different styles when it came to handling suspects, and even if there was a standard operating procedure for questioning people, it didn't mean that those procedures were always followed. People were not push-button machines that could be manipulated according to an instruction manual, and Arthur knew from his psychology courses and from experience that someone had to be ready to jump on the slightest inclination of wrongdoing. Nothing satisfied an officer of the law more than drawing out an uncontestable confession from a suspect.

Arthur's lips pursed in annoyance. Was that what Merlin was doing? Goading Arthur into telling him the whole story from start to finish in the hopes that Arthur would reveal a detail that would incriminate him? Or was he going to make Arthur repeat the events of the last several hours as often as it would take to make Arthur make a mistake that would lead to a confession? 

A flare of anger chased away the muddy adrenaline-exhaustion that left him sluggish and irritable, even hours after the last murder. No backcountry yokel would get the better of Arthur Pendragon. He was going to exonerate himself and have the entire Ealdor's sheriff department kissing his fucking feet in apology.

Arthur nodded to himself, satisfied. He didn't graduate at the top of his class for his good looks. He had a plan, and it involved cooperating to a point and keeping his mouth shut until his father arrived to bail him out.

A flushed and slightly unkempt Merlin returned to the interrogation room. Arthur studied him carefully, taking note of the frazzled curl of his hair, the pink of his cheeks, the disarray of his clothes. He wanted to shout outrage that Merlin had cut the questioning short so that he could get laid, but Arthur shut up quickly when he realized that Merlin hadn't brought his files or his notes with him this time. Instead, all he had with him were two steaming cups of fresh coffee. 

They clinked ominously on the table.

Arthur stared at them for a long time. He couldn't help thinking that Merlin's disarming appearance and lack of preparedness stank of some sort of trap. 

"So. You've had time to go over what you've told me so far," Merlin said, scratching the back of his neck in a gesture that reeked of uncertainty. He dropped his hand to the chair and dragged it away from the table, sitting down. He didn't quite meet Arthur's eyes, and asked, "You keep saying this… Golden Eyes thing was a 'he'. How are you so sure?"

"I don't," Arthur said slowly, choosing his words with care. "I'm using a generic term. A high percentage of mass murders of this type are perpetrated by men. Statistically, I would be correct in guessing that Golden Eyes is male."

Merlin rubbed his face with his hand, but Arthur clearly heard him mutter an irritated, "Fucking law students."

"That's right," Arthur said angrily, finding a second wind to pour into the fight. "I'm a law student. I know how this is supposed to work, so I'm going to ask for clarification before we continue. Am I a suspect?"

Merlin leaned back, slumping a little in his chair, and regarded Arthur with resignation. "That's not up to me."

An alarm bell rang in Arthur's head. "You're the senior investigator on the case. Why isn't it up to you?"

Merlin neatly sidestepped the question and asked, "Why don't you tell me the rest of it?"

Arthur's eyes narrowed. Slowly, with great care, he leaned forward and laid his crossed arms on the table, bumping the cup of coffee aside.

"What part do you want to hear about?" Arthur asked with a purr. He was rewarded with a startled look in Merlin's eyes, and he smirked, satisfied, because he could play the mind-fuck game as well as anyone, if not better. "How terrified we all were? How we tried to run away, but outside wasn't safe, and there was nowhere in the cottage to hide without bumping into a body?"

Merlin cleared his throat.

"Or how about when Gwaine and Mithian went to the kitchen to make tea to help us calm the fuck down and figure out what to do?"

 

* * *

 

None of them had chased him into the forest, and Merlin had been glad of it. It meant he'd be able to to stretch out the evening's entertainment. Still, a lingering disappointment had remained, and it had everything to do with how _excited_ he'd become to kill the screeching bitch as Arthur Pendragon watched with absolute rapture.

It was that same excitement that had driven him out of the interrogation room to take care of the hard cock in his dick, and it fed into a persistent thrill now, to hear Arthur continue the story.

Merlin had watched the kids through the window of the cottage from the darkness of the forest beyond, his magic sated, for the time being. Mithian had fussed over filling the teapot, her hands shaking so badly that Merlin had been able to hear the rattle from outside. Gwaine had taken down four mugs from the cupboard, but betrayed his nerves when he opened a box of bagged tea and sent them scattering all over the counter.

In what could only be described as a scripted movie moment better captured on film, the two of them had looked at each other with earnestness and comforted each other in a tight embrace. It had been disgusting to watch.

The window had been closed, so Merlin hadn't been able to hear them speak. But he'd been doing this long enough to know the sort of useless platitudes that Gwaine had been murmuring in Mithian's ear. _It's gonna be all right, I promise. I'll get us out of this. We'll be fine. We'll see our families again, we'll get past this, life will be normal, we'll go home --_

People did strange things in times of great stress, but Merlin admitted he'd been a little surprised to watch Gwaine's hand slide down the curves of Mithian's waist to firmly grasp her shapely ass. She'd gasped, pulling back, and the expected slap across the face never came. Mithian had surged up and met Gwaine's lips in a violent, hungry kiss.

Gwaine's hands had done short work of her shirt. Her blouse buttons had popped off when he yanked it open to reveal a flimsy pink bra. She'd worked open his beach bum shorts and shoved them down; he'd raised her skirt, turned her around, and pushed her into the kitchen counter, where they'd fucked with the sort of perfunctory efficiency that spoke of frequent illicit and public encounters. Hard and brutal, but careful and quiet given the surroundings, and with quick, businesslike efficiency.

It had been a good live porno show until the steam from the nearby boiling teapot fogged up the window.

"They were taking too long," Arthur said, spreading his hands in a _What did they fucking expect us to do?_ gesture. "The pot was whistling, no one was taking care of it, we thought the worst. Elyan ran in, stopped dead in the entrance, and I crashed into his backside.

"Lo and behold and what do we see? Mithian, who seems sweet and delightful on the surface but is really a snobby bitch with a vicious streak as dark as Morgana's, getting her pussy pounded by Gwaine. As far as I knew, Gwaine was supposedly in a committed relationship with the woman he wanted to marry, and whom, incidentally, was supposed to be my pretend girlfriend. It seemed he'd gotten over her sad demise awfully quickly. It was quite clear why."  
 Arthur paused to sip his coffee. Merlin slumped in his seat, elbow on the table, hand propping his chin. He covered the corner of his mouth with his fingers, unable to stop his delight at hearing Arthur talking dirty in his posh upper class accent from showing on his face.

"They absolutely had no idea we were standing there, watching the free peep show." Arthur raised an imperious brow, as if he were above it all. "Gwaine pulled her bra down. Jiggling tits never did anything for me, but Elyan had an impressive hard on poking straight out from his shorts and a look on his face as if he couldn't decide whether he wanted to jerk off right there or kill Gwaine for fucking the girl he thought he'd have a shot with."

The way Arthur said _Fucking_ was so goddamned filthy that Merlin shifted in his seat, unable to stop his unconscious squirm in time. Luckily, Arthur didn't seem to have noticed.

"Did he?" Merlin asked, his voice a little rough. "Did he ever have a chance with her, I mean?"

"No. Of course not. Mithian gets what Mithian wants, and if she doesn't want to be the awkward seventh wheel at a couples' getaway, she'll latch onto the first pretty boy who looks like he'd be a pretty good ride," Arthur said. He put his coffee cup down gingerly and tilted his head, raising an eyebrow coquettishly. "Or whoever's nearest, it seems. According to Elena, Gwaine fucked like a machine, never satisfied until he'd hammered her unconscious after a spectacular orgasm. From the way he was slamming his cock in Mithian's cunt, and the barely-bitten off moans she was making, he was well on her way to achieving his goal."

Arthur paused.

"That's when the situation got out of control." He made a small noise and spread his hands. "Even more so than it already was, I mean. 

"Elyan had decided what he wanted to do, and it wasn't to subscribe to the gentlemanly code of letting the other guy have firsts and graciously taking sloppy seconds. He pulled Gwaine off, the fists went flying, I saw far more of Mithian than I ever wanted to, and I did the sensible thing and took the teapot from the stove."

Merlin snorted, unable to contain his amusement. Arthur glanced at him curiously, his eyes sparkling with a life that Merlin hadn't noticed before, and offered Merlin a faint, tentative smile.

The smile made Arthur appear his age. He was scratching at the shirttails of adulthood, his face soft with the lingering traces of youth, his body long-limbed and loose, his frame filling the promise of solidity and strength. Merlin liked to look at him.

But the smile disappeared in a heartbeat, and the light in his eyes went out with the flick of a switch. Something heavy and unyielding slammed down, and Merlin thought he could hear a vault door swinging shut in the distance.

It felt as if he'd lost something. Slowly, Merlin sat up straight, dropping his arm. They weren't two guys at a bar trading funny stories over beer and whiskey shots. Merlin was a decorated police officer and the senior deputy in charge of an investigation, and Arthur was the suspect in a multiple murder spree.

"Go on," Merlin said sternly, glancing down at the table. He frowned slightly to realize he didn't have his notebook and tried to remember where he'd left the files. He had a vague mental image of having dropped everything nearby, but the exact location was hazy.

"It ended exactly the way you'd expect," Arthur said, his tone stiff. "Gwaine eventually remembered to stuff his dick back into his shorts, cranky because he hadn't gotten off. He tried to give as good as he got, but Elyan's a country boy with all the muscle that goes with baling hay day in and day out, and all those hours Gwaine spends at the gym are just for show. There's a whole lot of shouting, far too much testosterone, male posturing, dishes flying, and furniture breaking.

"Mithian howled, _Nobody owns me, I'll fuck who I want, I'll fuck Arthur_ , and there's me, off to the side, mortified and about to beg, _Please don't_ , when she stormed out.

"Gwaine headed for the liquor cabinet. Elyan scrambled to his feet, glared at me as if it's my fault that he still had a boner, and went somewhere. I'm pretty sure at that point that I'm the only person who had an ounce of common sense left, because it's surely a terrible idea for anyone to be alone when there's a violent murderer lurking somewhere looking for his next opportunity."

Arthur's cool inflection cracked toward the end, warmed with the sort of unspoken desire for encouragement. Merlin didn't react, electing to stare stonily at Arthur until Arthur continued.

"I was in the process of trying to get Gwaine to stop drinking the bottle of Macallan Scotch that my family must have left behind the last time we vacationed at the cottage, when, of course, Mithian started screaming. Gwaine lurched toward the bedrooms, Elyan appeared from wherever he'd gone sulking, his shorts sporting a suspicious stain on the front and his dick unsurprisingly limp, and went that way, too."

"And you?" Merlin asked, though he already knew the answer.

Arthur snorted. He crossed his arms over his chest. "No. Absolutely not. I was done. Completely, one hundred percent done. I had enough. I was not going to be a puppet for some maniac's entertainment any longer. I wasn't going to be the headless chicken anymore. I had no interest in seeing someone else die in front of me."

Was it Merlin's imagination, but did the pitch of Arthur's voice increase ever so slightly at that statement? Before he could think too much about it, Arthur leaned forward.

"I know what Golden Eyes wanted. What he wants. It's the same thing that every narcissistic sociopath wants. Attention. They didn't get it from their mommies, they definitely didn't get it from their daddies, and they can't pay anyone to suck their tiny little needle dicks if they paid them a million dollars."

Merlin blinked. "That's harsh," he managed.

Arthur shrugged. "That shouldn't surprise you at all. Psychological profiling is a thing. No serial killer -- no sociopathic asshole with murderous tendencies -- is unique. There's a checklist. Abandoned by their alcoholic fathers, raised by domineering mothers -- _check_. Did poorly in school, was bullied, maybe even was someone's whipping boy -- _check_. Wet the bed on a regular basis -- _check_. Killed puppies and kittens as a kid -- _check_ \--"

Merlin watched Arthur's hand make little checkmarks in the air. His mouth moved, but Merlin had a hard time focusing on the words through his growing rage.

"It's always the person everyone least suspects. The guy who's so smart they're miles ahead of everyone else. The guy with authority problems, who thinks himself better than his superiors. The guy who doesn't give a shit about anybody but himself, but is good at pretending. The every-day boy-next-door with aw-chucks charm who's really just a pathetic thirty-to-forty year old thumb-sucker who pisses his pants at night and gets his nuts off fucking the bloody remains of someone's pet bunny."

Arthur's smirk was nasty.

"Just like Golden Eyes."

 

* * *

 

Arthur expected some sort of reaction from the deputy. The angry scowl shadowing Merlin's expression when he reeled back into his chair so hard that the chair's legs scraped along the cement floor with a squeak was definitely not one of them. A policeman's amused snort, a grunt of approval at his knowledge, or maybe even a companionable nod.

Not the angry slap on the face with the wide eyes of a man who looked as if only murder would sate his mood.

It was there-and-gone in a few heartbeats. A trained professional could detect fleeting micro-expressions that were the key to someone's behaviour and thoughts in seconds; Arthur had had nearly a minute, and there was no missing any of it. The intent of his words had been to lure Merlin into revealing how he was going to trick Arthur into confessing to the murder charges. Instead, what Arthur had gotten was a phenomenal slip that informed Arthur of just how right he was while being so completely wrong.

Golden Eyes was very much like every textbook serial killer Arthur had learned about in Professor Monmouth's Psych 401: Advanced Look Into the Criminal Mind course. Vain and narcissistic, zealously proud of their intelligence and how they were perceived, serial killers took it very poorly when someone mocked them.

Merlin wasn't on some underhanded agenda to make Arthur confess to his friends' murders. He never had been. Merlin wanted to hear all about the murders he himself had perpetrated. Merlin was Golden Eyes.

Somehow, this secret knowledge didn't rattle Arthur in the least. After being on the wrong end of so many deaths, he was aware of Golden Eyes' capability for violence and the depths of his depravity. Arthur should be afraid.

He wasn't. He was thrilled. His heart rate sped up, his stomach fluttered with butterflies, and he had to fight to keep himself from grinning as if he were a teenager meeting his celebrity crush. Except his celebrity crush was furious, and Arthur was going to lose his chance to make a good impression before he even got one.

Realizing how little time he had to soothe Merlin's temper, Arthur quickly picked up the thread of the story.

"When they came out, Gwaine was devastated. Completely shaken up. Elyan might as well have been the one gutted, he was so pale. I couldn't help myself. As soon as they'd calmed down, I went to take a look," Arthur confided.

Merlin's proverbial hackles had abated, but his gaze was cold and detached, as if he were trying to decide between Arthur's evisceration or a simple beheading. 

Taking that as an encouraging sign, Arthur asked, letting his voice drop to a conspiring murmur. "Do you like art?"

Merlin blinked again, slow and languid with wide-eyed confusion as he tried to follow Arthur's train of thought. His brow furrowed, and whatever anger he had held onto a moment ago was funnelled in an irritated huff. "What? Yes, of course. What does that even have to do with anything --"

"I like art," Arthur said, revealing a tiny hint of his true self show. It wouldn't do to show all his cards and to be wrong. He had to be certain, but he'd at least reached out with a peace offering that was as much fishing lure as it was flirtation. "There's a certain anticipation to seeing a beautiful piece. They're simply not hangings on a wall in a dollar-store frame. No. Only the most exquisite presentation will have to do. A certain build-up is required, working up from lesser pieces until one reaches the crescendo of the exhibit. If done perfectly, seeing the artwork can absolutely take your breath away."

Merlin licked his lips. He swallowed. He gave his head a minute shake, and roughly said, "We're not talking about art."

Arthur had his answer. If there had been any doubt before, he was absolutely certain now. Merlin's irises were dark with desire, his cheeks flushed with arousal, and he dropped his hands to his lap, below the table, where Arthur couldn't see.

So he plunged into it. It was risky, stepping out from behind the mask he'd cultivated his entire life. He'd had a long childhood under the public eye with a stringent father monitoring everything he ever did and scolding him anytime he stepped out of line. Arthur didn't know what would happen if Merlin saw him as he truly was, but he had a feeling that the rewards to be gained would be far more than he could imagine.

"But we are," Arthur said, his voice low. 

He took that moment to glance up at the video camera in the corner of the room and was startled to realize that the red recording light, which had been on when Merlin had first entered the interrogation room, was now off. He wondered how long it had been like that, but only one person would have bothered making the effort, and that person was in the room with Arthur now.

Merlin released a slow breath. His left arm shifted subtly; Arthur imagined that Merlin was pressing a palm to his hardening cock to try to take the edge off. He had no sympathy whatsoever, because he'd been hard since he first started telling the story and no opportunity for relief. The loose clothes that the department had given him did absolutely nothing to contain his own erection, but the table gave him some cover. He also had far more self-control than Merlin, it seemed, and he wondered how Merlin would take to being edged, again and again.

Or if Merlin would do it to _him_. The thought made Arthur shiver.

Arthur swallowed and forced himself to focus. "I'd walked the gauntlet of exhibits, from the early meditative works to the instinctive and reactive. I'd seen the thoughtful, contemplative displays during a moment of calm, and I'd seen the violent, emotional outbursts. I feel as if I'd been bearing witness to the progress of a master's work, and the anticipation was bound to kill me.

"The hallway was too long. I don't think I breathed a single breath. When I rounded the corner and looked into the open door to the guest room, I didn't even have the air in me to release a gasp of…"

Arthur trailed off.

Merlin was hooked by Arthur's words. He leaned forward in anticipation, blindly ledge to that edge, and…

Arthur let go. He shrugged, as if completely disappointed, and summarized the scene with a flippant, "Well. Mithian was dead. She'd been laid out wantonly against the dresser, very much as she'd looked in the kitchen when Gwaine had been fucking her. I'm not entirely sure what Golden Eyes used to prop her up, but… well. You saw it for yourself."

Merlin's eyes narrowed. Arthur could practically hear him thinking, _Fucking tease_.

Arthur tilted his head and smiled in gleeful challenge. What was Merlin going to do about it?

 

* * *

 

_You goddam little shit_ , Merlin didn't say.

Merlin didn't like to admit it, but sometimes, he got distracted and missed important clues. That was as true an occurrence during an investigation as it was in his personal life. He was as likely to overlook how a suspect might have received a two-second telephone call from an unlisted number once a day for months as the glitch he'd programmed into the system fed him pennies from millions of people's investments as he was to be completely oblivious when someone was flirting with him.

The lack of focus occurred more frequently when Merlin was agitated and needed to release tension. Either he took care of it with some rough sex from a one-night stand in another city, ensuring he'd never see them again, which helped less and less as he grew older; or more often, through bloodletting -- his own or someone else's. Preferably someone else's.

He'd been just getting into Arthur's storytelling, when Arthur abruptly dumped a metaphorical bucket of cold water on his head.

It took Merlin nearly a minute of staring at Arthur to realize that Arthur had been goading him. Deliberately.

Arthur had started with the blatant open-handed insult -- chalking Golden Eyes as nothing more than another textbook case of bed wetting, _Really?_ \-- then with the sensuous segue into giving Merlin exactly what he wanted in that sexy little purr, only to deny him just as Merlin was about to get what he wanted.

Arthur wasn't wrong. Merlin liked attention, though his desire for attention could hardly be attributed to any of the reasons that Arthur had listed. His father had never been in the picture, though through no fault of his own; he'd been killed by the bookie who'd come collecting the same night that Merlin was born. Merlin's mother indulged him as much as she could despite her three jobs keeping her from home. He'd never so much as raised a hand to an animal -- he loved them too much -- but people were a different matter.

He liked being the most terrifying urban legend of the modern age. A monster who appeared seemingly at random, who killed everyone at his leisure and left no survivors behind. Golden Eyes had a cult following online, where forums after forums were dedicated to all of the murders people believed were attributed to him and coming up with tragic backstories to explain how he could do what he did and why.

Merlin had still been reeling from Arthur's harsh words when, suddenly, he'd softened and picked up his story-telling with such a seductive treat. _Arthur had been unable to resist_.

Unable to resist seeing Merlin's handiwork. Unable to keep himself from seeing the beauty in what Merlin had done. Gravitating toward Merlin the way flies always found a rotting body.

Merlin cursed his lapse. His foolishness. Why had he let Arthur tantalize him like that? Why had Merlin allowed himself to lose himself to Arthur's words? Why had he let this… this fucking spoilt prick and privileged upper class jackass… this _asshole_ get so neatly under his skin?

Arthur looked so smug about it, too. Like he'd won.

Merlin didn't know what Arthur believed he'd accomplished. He exhaled a slow sigh, pretended it didn't bother him that Arthur had glossed over the details, and flitted his fingers in the air. He hated to do it, because his uniform trousers had absolutely no give in them and he'd willingly shoot a load right fucking now if Arthur would continue, but in the most bored tone he could manage, he said, "Go on."

A dark expression replaced the triumphant gleam in Arthur's eyes. His smile dropped. Merlin had the distinct impression that Arthur didn't like losing and that he was accustomed to getting his way, but neither were options for him this night.

By now, the Ealdor sheriff department's staff was reduced to a skeleton crew. Most of them had returned from the crime scene only briefly before turning around to head home. Evidence collection and evaluation of the crime scenes would resume in the morning. No one was around. The interrogation area was soundproofed. The security footage had been turned off.

Golden Eyes never permitted anyone anyone survive.

But he also had a hand to play in everyone's death, and he was far more interested in knowing what had gone wrong that night than in hearing a graphic description of how Mithian had died. If Merlin ever wanted to jerk off to it, well, there would be crime scene photos. They would be too bright and stark, matter-of-fact instead of artful, but they'd do in a pinch.

The silence stretched. Arthur's expression became thoughtful, and Merlin didn't like it one bit. He raised his eyebrows meaningfully, rolled his hand in the air in a _Come on, I don't have all fucking night_ gesture, and impatiently snapped, "What happened next?"

"Gwaine left," Arthur said, shrugging. "I don't know how long I was in Mithian's room."

There was a significant pause, and Merlin had the distinct impression that he'd lost whatever game Arthur was playing, again. The way Arthur loosely rubbed his encircled hand along his forearm didn't leave much to the imagination.

Merlin sat up a little straighter.

Was this little shit hinting that he'd wrapped his hand around his cock and jerked off to Mithian's cooling corpse? Was he --

Merlin's eyes narrowed.

Had Arthur's excitement that night been less fearful adrenaline and more aroused and hungry? Was Arthur… Was Arthur like Merlin? Did he… Did he _like_ what Merlin had done, so much so that…

No. He wouldn't come to hasty conclusions. He wasn't stupid. Merlin leaned forward, studying Arthur's every movement, listening to every word. 

"I'd come out of there and Gwaine was already gone. I must have missed another fight because Elyan was sacked out between the ottoman and the big sofa in the living room, just coming to, his face swelling up. The front door was open, the glass case over the fireplace where my father kept an antique revolver was broken and the gun missing, and, well."

Arthur gestured nonchalantly in the air. "You know the rest."

Merlin sat up straight. "You didn't go after him?"

"Of course we did," Arthur said, somewhat indignantly. He gestured at the table at file folders that weren't there anymore, and said, "It's all in my statement."

Merlin leaned forward, placing his crossed arms on the table. "Tell me."

"Oh, well. If I must," Arthur said, his sigh heavy and put-upon. The small smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth was not Merlin's imagination. "Convincing Elyan to leave the house and look for Gwaine took some doing. I'm sure you understand. The biggest crush of his life -- or, rather, the last twelve hours -- was dead, heinously so, only minutes after Gwaine had his dick in her. That's not a situation anyone would be amenable to altruism."

"Understandable," Merlin said. He knew what happened to Gwaine. As much as he would like a third person's perspective on the matter, he really needed to know what happened to _Elyan_.

"We heard shots. It might've been from the other side of the property, I'm not sure. It's always been hard to tell. At that point, Elyan and I split up."

"You split up," Merlin said, frowning.

"Yes, that's correct. We split up." Arthur paused. "Are you going to repeat everything I say?"

Merlin grunted. "Why did you split up?"

"Because we'd cover more ground that way, obviously. It wasn't my idea. Only idiots think that they'll be safe against a serial killer if they go off on their own, without weapons, and without a plan," Arthur said. His smile faded and his eyes went dark. "In all honesty, you can't think that anyone in this sort of situation would be the pinnacle of logic."

"I suppose not," Merlin said flatly. He didn't bother to prompt Arthur to continue; it was clear that he wouldn't give him details, if he even had any to begin with. Merlin tapped the table and said, "You claim that you wandered the forest for hours, stumbled back to the cottage when the sun began to rise, and that your gardener showed up not long afterward, luckily stopping short of crushing your friend Valiant's head with his truck."

"That's all in my statement," Arthur said, curiously agreeable. "It took some time, but I calmed George down enough to drive us both back to town."

He made a gesture. _That's it_.

Arthur stared at Merlin. Merlin stared back. After several agonizing minutes of silence, Merlin rubbed his face in frustration.

"But…"

Merlin looked up.

"I could be persuaded to tell you what really happened to Elyan…" 

Arthur leaned forward, elbows on the table, arms loose in front of him. His eyes were intent, his mouth set in a confident, knowing smile. 

"… If you tell me what you did to Gwaine."

 

* * *

 

Between Arthur's largely unemotional father, cutthroat high school friends who were more shark than people, and the necessity of never showing weakness on a daily basis, Arthur liked to believe he had a solid poker face. But the longer Merlin stared at him without a single flicker of… of _anything_ , the more Arthur's heart raced in his ears, making him feel dizzy and faint.

Then, slowly, ever so slowly, Merlin tilted his head.

There was no knowing what he was thinking. No revelatory micro-expression. Not a hint of surprise at Arthur's words, not the faintest trickle of surprise, no anger at the accusation, however thinly veiled, of being Golden Eyes.

Merlin's only movement was mechanical, detached, evaluative. Arthur felt as if he were being peeled out of his clothes, out of his skin, each layer removed with the finesse and precision of a surgeon's scalpel to reveal the very nature of what he was. He was naked under Merlin's scrutiny, and he hated how he must seem: young, inexperienced, nervous, and so, so eager to please. Arthur had been attracted to everything that Golden Eyes had done, had fought to keep his macabre desire hidden from his friends, and struggled with the insecurity that Golden Eyes -- that _Merlin_ \-- wouldn't think that he was enough.

Arthur held his breath to keep from hyperventilating, but that only made the tension in his chest grow worse.

Merlin's gaze dropped down to Arthur's lips. To his throat. Down to his chest. He met Arthur's eyes. Merlin's chin raised with a faint gesture of acceptance, of approval.

Arthur thought he would faint. He forced himself to breathe slowly. He was sure that his cheeks were hot, flushed red with the arousal that he could no longer keep in check, and refused to be embarrassed by it.

He was rewarded with Merlin's slow smile. It wasn't the knowing smirk of a cocky policeman who'd captured the perpetrator of a grievous crime. There was no trace of friendliness in it. If anything, it was the big, broad, nearly manic and beautifully cruel smile of a man who had found his greatest desire rewarded.

"I didn't expect the gun," Merlin admitted, though his tone was companionable. They weren't at the sheriff's department; they were at a coffee shop -- in Rome, perhaps, or in a quaint countryside somewhere in France, sipping an extravagant brew, comparing techniques the way most people would discuss the weather. "I was shot."

"No!" Arthur gaped, aghast. He scanned Merlin's person, looking for anything that spoke of an injury. Merlin had been moving easily, without a limp, without favouring a side, and just as Arthur had come to the conclusion that it must have been a near thing, Merlin spoke again.

"A flesh wound. Nothing more," Merlin said. "Enough to shake me out of my rage."

"But you --" Arthur stopped himself. He bit down on his lower lip, and didn't speak again until Merlin's eyebrows rose in question. "But you're always so calm. Always in control. Why were you angry? I mean, I could see it in Mithian, but I didn't understand. I still don't."

"I was angry because I didn't have the audience I wanted," Merlin said, offering up a nonchalant shrug. He reached for his coffee cup and sipped it.

"But you had Gwaine and Elyan and…" Arthur trailed off in realization. All of his earlier insecurities washed away. Awe filled his voice when he said, "You did it for me."

Merlin ducked his head bashfully, and when he raised his eyes, it was with a coy, flirtatious look. "Did you like it?"

"I _loved_ it," Arthur blurted out without thinking, his voice breathy with… with… He could hardly contain himself. He'd been courted all along and he hadn't realized it. Merlin must have been furious when Arthur hadn't come to see his latest handiwork. He must have thought that Arthur had been rejecting his suit. 

Arthur reached under the table, pressing against his cock with his palm, rubbing it through the stiff cloth of Ealdor Sheriff Department sweats.

Merlin's gaze followed the movement. "Put your hands on the table where I can see them," Merlin said softly, the clink of his coffee cup on the metal table louder than his voice.

Arthur didn't bother to muffle his moan at Merlin's gentle command. It was torture to let go of his cock, but he did as he was instructed.

"Good boy," Merlin said, and Arthur could have come merely from the affection that weighed the praise. Arthur measured his breathing, grasping at the slippery strands of his control, but it was a trying thing when Merlin relentlessly drove him toward the edge with his next words. "I liberated the gun after Gwaine's second shot. Took it out of his hands like it was candy from a baby. His courage only lasted him so long. He turned and ran, but he must have gotten himself turned around, because he went deeper into the forest instead of back to the house."

"You chased him," Arthur said, imagining it perfectly. "Like a wolf nipping at the heels of its prey."

"Worse than a wolf," Merlin said, his grin full of teeth, and Arthur believed it. Even while he'd watched Golden Eyes murder Vivian before his eyes, it had been frightening. A good kind of scare had settled in his bones, winding around them like a ticklish, warning tingle, and he hadn't been able to tear his eyes away from the dark figure radiating shadowy wisps, his eyes bright and mesmerizing and full of death.

"And then what happened?" Arthur begged.

"He tripped," Merlin said, bored. Disappointed. "They all trip in the darkness. When they fall, they crawl away as if that would save them. Gwaine was no better. He bawled like a baby the entire time. He kept looking over his shoulders at me to see if he was safe, yet, and of course he wasn't. He flailed an arm out ahead of him looking for a safe spot."

Arthur couldn't help the whine that escaped his throat. His hands clenched tight on the surface of the table, and he shifted in his seat, desperate for some sort of friction to ease the ache in his cock.

Merlin watched him with a small, satisfied smile on his face, but he didn't order Arthur to stop moving. Arthur took that as permission and didn't bother to try to hide what he was doing. A hiss escaped him when the coarse sensation of a cheap pair of new sweatpants finally brushed sensitive skin, but it didn't last for very long, the material sticking to his skin where pre-come had soaked through.

"I let him go for a few dozen feet. He cried for his mother. He pissed his pants. I could smell it in the air."

"Oh, Christ," Arthur said. Gwaine had always been something of a crybaby. Women had always been attracted to his bad boy personae, but they stayed because he was such a momma's boy. He'd seen Gwaine weeping, once, at the thought of that Elena might leave him, and it had done nothing for Arthur. He'd been disgusted. But he wished he'd been there to see Gwaine cowering at Merlin's feet, because that -- _that_ was a sight Arthur would've loved to see.

"I needed to put him out of his misery. I speared him, taking my time pushing the branch through his torso. I have to give him credit, because he kept trying to crawl away the entire time a piece of wood the size of my fist --"

Arthur looked at Merlin's hands to get an idea of the size and forgot to breathe for a second.

"-- was splitting its way through his chest."

"Was… Last night… Was I meant to be your last?" Arthur asked suddenly, desperate to know. By that point in the night, there had been only two of them left. 

Merlin tilted his head, but this time, the gleam in his eyes was predatory. "At first."

Arthur swallowed, not sure what to think. A mess of emotions swarmed up at him: pride that he would have been Merlin's centerpiece, pleasure that he would have seen Merlin at the end, confusion at the tone. "You changed your mind?"

"Such a pretty boy you are, Arthur Pendragon. Spoilt rotten to the core. Everyone around you is subhuman and you treat them like the shit you'd scrape off your shoes; you make them pander to your whims because they'll never get your attention otherwise. They're not worthy of you."

Arthur licked his lips. He wanted to deny Merlin's words. Put like that, he sounded like such an asshole. He shouldn't want to hear any more, he should defend himself, but hearing just how terrible he was in such a no-nonsense way caused a tingling warmth to pool deep in his groin.

"But they don't know you, do they?" Merlin continued. "They don't know how lonely you are. How much you crave someone's attention. Someone's touch. You need someone who understands you, but you've never encountered a single soul who did. You're worth a dozen of them. Such a bad little boy with dark, festering thoughts and murder growing in his heart. You might be worthy of me."

"Oh, shit," Arthur said, humping the air beneath the table. His eyes rolled back at each of Merlin's words. "Oh, God."

"No God," Merlin purred. "Just me."

Arthur gasped, desperate for completion, but he didn't dare remove his hands from the table. He looked at Merlin, about to beg that he be allowed to touch himself.

"You'll be my last, but not for a very, very long time," Merlin said.

And his eyes flashed gold.

 

* * *

 

Arthur was so fucking gorgeous when he came. 

Merlin watched the moment when his words pushed Arthur up the crest of the wave, as he tottered on the brink, never quite taking that last step over the edge. He kept Arthur there for a few seconds more before reaching out with his magic to give the lightest feather-stroke of Arthur's cock through his clothes.

That was all he'd needed.

Merlin's own cock throbbed, and even though he'd already gotten off once, it didn't mean that he didn't need the relief he craved.

When he saw that Arthur was with him again, Merlin couldn't wait a second longer. He gestured with his hand. Arthur's chair was shoved back. The table careened across the room.

Merlin was on his feet and crowding into Arthur's space in an instant, hauling him out of his chair and shoving him against the far wall. Arthur was beautifully lax and obedient in his hands, too drunk on the fresh endorphins in his bloodstream to even think about resisting. Merlin took a moment to enjoy the feeling of Arthur's young body against his, imagining how many ways he could take from it, now and in the future.

If Arthur's eyes had been nearly black with arousal before, the darkness filled his eyes once again in response to Merlin's manhandling.

"Tell me, my pretty boy," Merlin whispered, his lips brushing against the faint scruff of Arthur's cheek, "Why did you kill Elyan?"

Arthur swallowed. He lowered his eyes in shyness, maybe embarrassment. Merlin waited what seemed like interminable minutes before Arthur finally answered. "I was jealous."

The admission made Merlin pause. "Jealous?"

Arthur turned his head away. "I wanted… I wanted to make sure I would be last."

Merlin gently stroked the side of Arthur's neck before slipping a finger at the crook of his jaw beneath his ear and pressing a firm thumb on his chin, forcing him to meet Merlin's eyes. Merlin studied the expression in them with great care, picking apart every colour, splintering every shade, until he was satisfied that it was the complete, absolute truth.

The hardest part of satisfying his urges was never at the beginning, when the herd had no idea about the predator circling around their pasture. It wasn't even in the middle, when those who had survived the initial attack were on alert and had enough sense to arm themselves with whatever they had on hand. It was always, always in the end, when there were only two of them left, unwilling to leave the other and forcing Merlin to kill them both quickly, or at the same time.

It wasn't his favourite approach.

He'd eventually fine-tuned his technique, ensuring that the two most polar opposite personalities in the group would be the ones at the end. Those were nearly always the ones Merlin could turn against the other, separating them so that he could… _finish_ the way that he wanted.

When Merlin returned to the cottage, he'd been pleased that he hadn't needed to bother separating Arthur and Elyan. Paranoia had been quick to settle in when he realized that Elyan was dead. Fury burned in him when he realized that there was an interloper in what he'd deemed his territory, at least for the night, and with his plans suddenly curtailed, he couldn't focus on anything but the body of a man who had not died at his hand.

He'd stared at it for too long. A jagged cut across the throat. Blood drying on his torso. Eyes wide open, glazed with death, distant with surprise. Body slack where it laid on the cold, cold ground.

It had taken far too long for Merlin to understand the sight that had been in front of him. To put aside Golden Eyes and to settle back into his own skin. To realize that this death had been an amateur's kill.

There'd been scuffling marks on the ground where Elyan had fought his attacker. A blow to Elyan's head must have subdued him enough that his opponent had achieved the upper hand. Several small cuts at Elyan's throat were hesitation marks made by someone who had never done anything like this before, but the fourth cut was clean and sure.

"You fucking idiot," Merlin snapped. Abruptly, Merlin shoved Arthur to his knees. Arthur went willingly, but his eyes were round and tinted with alarm, but like the perfect pretty boy he was, he didn't fight Merlin.

That alone was too much, and Merlin found himself unbuckling his thick leather belt. Arthur's eyes dropped to Merlin's crotch and his fear was replaced with the desperation of a hungry man. Nearly as soon as Merlin freed his cock from the stiff, starchy trousers of his uniform, Arthur was on it.

"Jesus. _Fuck_!"

Of course Arthur's mouth would be sin incarnate. Warm and wet, with too much spit that somehow didn't feel like enough, taking Merlin in so deep that he could feel the throat muscles squeezing around the head whenever Arthur swallowed. He didn't know if it was the disorienting sensation of having momentarily lost control of the situation or the dizzying pleasure that came from feeling Arthur's lips around his cock, but he let Arthur have the upper hand for what was probably far too long, because when he tried to pull away, Arthur scrambled after Merlin, hands on Merlin's hips to keep him from moving.

With a grunt of effort that had more to do with fighting his own desire to let Arthur have his way than with how difficult it was to get Arthur to stop, Merlin grabbed a handful of hair and wrenched Arthur's head back. His cock was covered in saliva, bobbing between them, cooling in the sheriff department's usually dodgy air conditioning, and Arthur was mesmerized.

Merlin twisted his hips, slapping Arthur with his cock.

"You left your fingerprints all over the scene. _You left the murder weapon behind_ ," Merlin snarled, smacking Arthur in the face again. 

Arthur's eyes were thin-slitted, his mouth was open in anticipation, and Merlin wasn't entirely sure that he was listening, but that didn't stop him from continuing his rant.

"I had to clean it up! Do you know how much effort that took? How much time I wasted making it look like it was Golden Eyes' kill?"

Merlin thrust lightly, his cock leaving a smear of spit and pre-come across Arthur's cheek.

"Do you know how angry I am that this kill isn't really mine?"

Arthur's eyes opened only a little wider with the first sign of awareness he'd truly had in the last short while, but Merlin had the answer he'd been looking for. The little shit had known exactly what he had been doing when he killed Elyan.

Merlin slid his cock into Arthur's mouth, pulling out before Arthur could get any ideas. The desperate whine was almost as good as the feeling of Arthur's fingers digging desperately into Merlin's thighs.

"You're not to kill anyone ever again," Merlin ordered, his voice low. He raised a warning brow when Arthur's full attention was on Merlin again. "Never. Do you understand? You'll help me pick the victims. You'll _watch_ me kill them. You won't interfere. And after I'm done, I'll fuck you until you can't walk for days. Their blood will dry on your skin before I'm even done ruining that bratty hole of yours."

Arthur's moan both surprised and pleased Merlin.

"Do you understand? Say it. Say you understand," Merlin barked.

"I understand," Arthur said, his voice rough. Merlin almost didn't hear the reticent tone, and he knew in that moment that Arthur was going to test him at every turn.

He was fucking perfect.

But for now, he deserved a reward for his compliance. "Good boy."

When Arthur's mouth parted in involuntary shudder, Merlin shoved his cock in. The smooth slide was helped along when Arthur realized what was happening, jaw slack, throat loose. Merlin hit the back and kept going, burying his groin in Arthur's face, and held Arthur still.  
 Tears streamed down Arthur's cheeks as he swallowed with difficulty, gasping for air. Merlin savoured the sensation before relenting, giving Arthur barely enough time to catch his breath before fucking his mouth with hard thrusts. He kept Arthur's head steady to keep it from crashing against the wall, taking his pleasure at forceful leisure, wishing that he dared turn on the video cameras to capture this moment, to be reviewed again and again.

They'd have time, Merlin knew. Time to revisit this exact incident, occasions where Arthur would need to be brought back in line and punished for disobedience. Merlin wouldn't be quick, then; he would make sure Arthur forgot the rest of the world.

Merlin closed his eyes. He pictured Arthur fighting with Elyan. He imagined the struggle as it had been drawn on the ground by footprints and tumbles. He focused on that moment when Arthur had a jagged knife held to Elyan's throat, but that image was quickly replaced with the memory of Arthur being brought into the station, hair and face masked with a grisly splash, his white tailored shirt absolutely soaked red, his hands smeared with ground-in dirt and blood.

Merlin's orgasm came far too fast. He'd tossed one off in the bathroom earlier. He should have lasted longer. He'd last longer, he promised no one, because the next time he fucked Arthur, it would be when and where he could make it last for hours.

He pulled out of Arthur's mouth, an absurd sense of pride filling him to realize that Arthur had swallowed every drop. Arthur was a handsome man, and at the moment he was irresistibly _pretty_ \-- his eyes red with tears, his face streaked with them, his hair in a harried mess where Merlin's hands had been. His lips were swollen, his cock was tenting his sweats again, and he looked perfectly willing to go another round.

Merlin was tempted, but he knew they wouldn't have the time. Someone would come check in on Arthur at some point. Merlin would have to clean them both up, deal with the large gap of time on the surveillance feed, make a half-hearted attempt to type his notes to make it look as if he'd quit the interrogation halfway through. Arthur's father was dragging an army of lawyers to Ealdor in the morning to get him out of lockup, and that would get him out of prison, at least. Merlin still needed to make a few finishing touches to ensure that there was enough reasonable doubt to tie the murders to George-the-Gardener, since no sane person would pin the murders on an urban legend named Golden Eyes.

"Such a good boy," Merlin murmured, returning Arthur's dazed smile with a smirk of his own. He stroked Arthur's cheek. "I'll take care of you."


End file.
